#that's like if ritz crackers were called vomits

[shiftytracts]

Stop Wanting More, part 2 of 2 (T/M/A fic)

In which season-four Jon tries to quiet his hunger for live statements by gorging himself on paper ones, and Daisy tells him what she used to do when she got shaky between hunts. Part one here.

Content warnings for this half:

Nausea, and brief descriptions of prior vomiting

Vague discussion of Daisy’s passive suicidality

Animal cruelty and death: Daisy talks about hunting rats for sport

—

“Statement of Alice ‘Daisy’ Tonner, regarding—”

“Shhhh! You’ll wake the tape recorder.” Her hand clapped over his mouth so hard his teeth buzzed like mugs in a cupboard. He did his best to say Ouch. The salt on her palm made his inner lips itch. Daisy sighed: “Too late; I can hear it hissing.”

At once the cushions began to lurch again, and his stomach contents with them. On her way past him off the couch Daisy managed both to step on his trouser leg and elbow him in the sacrum. Chills curled up in the shadows of heat she’d left on his forehead, stomach, legs. Her way back into her prior position went smoother, though. She even remembered how tightly to press his belly with hers. Why did returned warmth always make him shiver?

“Alright—skip the spiel. Just Ask.”

“What did you used to do when—” Daisy cut him off with a hollow laugh, which Jon seconded. As soon as he’d begun to speak the tape recorder clicked back on, as he’d suspected it would.

“Whatever; just do it.”

“You won’t be too self-conscious?”

She shrugged. “Won’t matter; I’ll be compelled.”

Jon bit down the wave of remorse and resentment her words stirred inside him. She’d agreed to this—cajoled him into it, even. He could examine those feelings later, when she’d gone to bed. When he was alone, and warm, and.

Unbidden into his head came the passage from Tristram Shandy about the “beds of justice.” He’d never read it before, having got through hardly ten pages of that book, and wondered now for half a second how Beholding could have thought this would help, until there thundered across his mind the words, I write one half full,—and t’other fasting;—or write it all full,—and correct it fasting;—or write it fasting; and Jon swallowed, as if that would make it stop. Less than a second later he could feel his stomach trying to expand around it.

Last week he’d tried reading an encyclopedia—vore-ing it, cover to cover. No good; he quit a third of the way in, when it bored him so much he caught himself fantasizing about its giving him a paper cut he’d have to get up to attend to. Eating fear-free trivia was like trying to fill up on tic tacs. Only when stuffed could he even feel it going down.

He told himself if he didn’t Ask her for her story now he’d only spoil his dinner with more useless facts.

“What did you used to do when you got shaky between hunts?”

“I hunted rats around my flat,” Daisy said at once, in the expressionless way of compulsion. In a voice more like her own, she went on, “Not inside, not at first, just—around the dumpsters. First my building’s, and then some nights the whole block. However long it took before I got too slow to enjoy chasing.

“Then one night I thought I saw one dart past in the corridor. So I left out bait for it, half hoping it’d attract more rats into the building. It worked; I found three in there that week.”

“What do you mean bait?”

Again her first sentence emerged as though she were reading it off a list. “Leftovers, mostly. Wasn’t hard—I didn’t have much appetite for” (in one-handed air quotes, with a huff of laughter) “'people food,’ anyway. I’d just make sure to leave a few bites unfinished, and stick them under the mat at the top of the stairs. Sandwich crusts usually, nothing gross. When I got Chinese takeaway I’d use the cabbage they put in the box.”

To make air quotes Daisy’d had to fish her hand out from under the blanket. Now she returned it to its slot on the side of his gut where hip gave way to bloat. Jon almost wished she hadn’t; he feared the reminder might weigh him down. He felt giddy and light, like if he stood and walked, hell, ran, it might not hurt his legs and chest. Like if he flapped his hands instead of wringing them he’d bump the ceiling. For Daisy to comfort his body he’d have to remember he had one.

“How did you catch them? It does—uh.” Whichever Watcher department took charge of compulsion seemed to know his question ended here, because Daisy responded before Jon could finish his follow-up sentence. (It doesn’t sound like you laid traps, he’d meant to say.)

“By the tail. I ran after them and stepped on their tails and then.” She paused for an entire second and closed her eyes tight, but by the time Jon realized what this meant she’d already concluded: “I snapped their spines with my shoe.”

That was all she said, but not all he learnt about it. The Eye let him—made him hear the crunch. For an instant it shared with him the satisfaction Daisy’d felt at the finality of that sound. It had been a sore spot for her, a then-recent wound, how many monsters didn’t die when you broke their necks.

Then her satisfaction left him, and he felt intensely sick.

“Stop—don’t say any more—I’m sorry Daisy, I didn’t—”

She snarled a sigh. “Yeah, I know. Guess I should’ve told you not to ask about that part.”

“Oh. No, it’s. I'm alright, I just meant, it looked like you… didn’t want to tell me that.”

“No I didn’t,” Daisy concurred, in a tone so flat he wondered whether he’d somehow compelled it.

“Is there anything else you don’t—er. What other questions about this would you prefer I didn’t ask.”

She shrugged. “Everything else is fair game.”

“Okay,” Jon said, wishing that answer reassured him more. “You don’t—need a minute, or?”

Again she shrugged. “Yeah, alright. You look like you might, anyway. How’s your gut feeling.”

It took him a moment to realize she meant his actual gut, not like. When he did he answered without thinking: “Not bad? Ignorable, mostly, but. That in itself is.” He looked down at his fingertips for some loose skin to peel. “I’m… stronger, now, already, my. My limbs feel like.”

Daisy nodded. “Like they could carry you without having to think about it.”

“Quite,” Jon agreed, though he wished as soon as the word left his mouth that he’d picked a different one. Something that sounded less like he wanted to talk about the phenomenon’s downside, its sinister implications. He very much did not.

“The rats, did you… eat them?”

“Ew, Jon,” she replied, like it was obvious. “Not literally, no. Didn’t have to. You don’t literally eat statements either, yeah? I just killed them and it… fed me.”

“But didn’t satisfy you,” Jon suggested.

“No. They didn’t make me less hungry, just made it easier to sleep. And they made my belly swell up like yours.” (She patted his; he huffed in pretended offense.) “That’s why I only did it after I’d gone home for the night: it made me slow. I’d know I’d had enough to go to bed when I couldn’t run after them anymore. When I tried to go without—I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. Soon as I stopped thinking about it, they’d fly open. Or at least, it never felt like I slept. Guess I must’ve done, though, ‘cause sometimes I’d find myself chewing on the bedding.” Daisy shook her head, with a sigh interpretable also as a laugh. “Think I’ve started doing that again. I keep finding holes in Basira’s sleeping bag.”

“Not yours, though?” Jon knew she and Basira slept with the edges of their two sleeping bags zipped together. (A frankenbag, Daisy called it.)

Daisy grinned: “No. Hers is a better texture.”

“Thought you said you didn’t remember doing it.”

“I don’t, but mine looks like it’d be grosser to have in your mouth.”

In reality, Jon had never seen her sleeping bag up close, but now Beholding showed him what it looked like. Once kelly green but now faded grayish, like a pond; the fabric was all over pills. It smelled like wood smoke, Ritz crackers, and the lone sock one finds at the bottom of every suitcase.

“That’s fair,” Jon allowed, hoping the strain in his voice would sound to her like a laugh. Somehow this piece of information, about the godforsaken sleeping bag, had brought his stomachache back way above the “ignorable” waterline. The nauseating smell, maybe? He tried to steady himself with a deep breath, but, well.

“You look sick.”

“Was it that obvious?”

“You’re not subtle, Jon,” she scoffed; “you gasp and writhe.”

Jon tried to shrug, tried to laugh. “I’m fine. It’s just… a lot. I’m alright, I’ve just never.” What, been this full? Compelled an eldritch snack after having already eaten his weight in paper? As if that weren’t obvious. He drew in breath to speak, but still hadn’t thought of an end to his sentence. Then he felt Daisy’s hands—both of them—start to dig shallow trenches, one up each of his sick sides. His breath came out in a shaky sigh.

“That help?”

“Yeah.”

Each time they reached his ribs—or, in the left side’s case, the place where his ninth and tenth ribs used to be—her hands turned back, in a slight arc so that they made narrow ovals, each a little closer to his stomach’s center than the last. Until they met in the middle, then worked their way slowly back out to his sides.

“Could you… keep doing that while I hear the rest of your.”

Her laugh had an edge to it that miiiight have been contempt? But she said, “Sure. What do you still want to know?”

“Uh.” He pretended to have to think about it. “Why don’t you hunt rats now?”

“I don’t want to kill things just because they’re weaker than me.” Daisy’s hands had frozen in place while she spoke these words; now they resumed. She sighed, but Jon wasn’t sure at what. “Rats are fine, they don’t need to die.”

“I wouldn’t say they’re fine,” Jon scoffed; “pretty sure they serve the Corruption. They spread hantavirus, ratbite fever, lymphocytic”—he paused to swallow a wave of nausea, hoping it was the ugliness of these facts and not their sheer bulk that sickened him. He hoped also that she’d assume his voice had caught on the pronunciation, rather than. He cleared his throat and continued: “Lymphocytic choriomeningitis, and leptospirosis. And the plague, of course, though not without help from.”

Daisy groaned, her teeth bared to the canines. Jon could feel her fingers curl into fists, though thankfully none of his skin got trapped between her nails and palms. “That’s exactly the kind of judgment I’m trying not to make anymore. They’re—they’re also good, okay? Rats. Had a friend with a rat once, when I was a kid.” For an instant Jon wondered if she meant Calvin Benchley. Then the Eye told him she did. “You can teach them tricks. Like dogs. His knew how to fetch, roll over, go through mazes to find treats. And they’re affectionate, friendly. The tails are weird, but—they have sweet eyes.”

A huff of laughter tumbled out of Jon’s nose. “All animals have sweet eyes. That’s a pretty low bar.”

“Don't flatter yourself.”

The Ceaseless Watcher seemed to side with her on this, showing him the eyes of lemurs, flies, goats, anglerfish (the regular kind).

“Either way, I hardly think that outweighs the plague.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Daisy insisted, still sounding querulous. She’d retracted her hands now, and held them balled together close to her chest—like Jon himself did when he felt too shy to stim outright. If they hadn’t been talking about rats the attitude probably wouldn’t’ve struck him as rat-like, but.

“It doesn’t always need to matter which one of those things is more important,” she went on. “It feels like it does, but—sometimes that’s just a habit we get into. Some things just are, okay? I like not having to think about it anymore.”

“Right, that makes sense, we can….”

“Besides. I didn’t care about any of that when I was hunting them. The diseases or whether they’re part of the Filth or whatever. I just knew they were gross, and that people were scared of them. That’s the main reason I killed monsters, too.”

“What if you just… caught them and let them go?”

“Monsters?”

“No, rats.”

“I don’t want a substitute, Jon. I’m alright going cold turkey.”

“But it’s not cold turkey, it’s—no turkey.”

Daisy looked at him for the first time in what felt like a while, and smiled, but furrowed her eyebrows. “Just what do you think ‘cold turkey’ means?”

“I know there’s no actual turkey,” Jon sighed, trying to ignore the Eye’s barrage of suggestions for where the phrase might have originated. God, his stomach hurt. He missed having her hands there to rub away some of this nausea and ache. Wondered what he could say to bring them back. Doing it himself at a time like this would’ve felt so. “I just mean, withdrawal is—different. It can kill you, but you’re still abstaining from something that people in general don’t need to live.”

“Aaaand you think people in general need the Hunt.”

“Of course not. I know you know what I’m getting at,” Jon persisted. “You’re talking about starvation—which, unless for some reason the Fears are too sentimental to throw their old husks away, means it will kill you. Not just—‘can.’”

“Maybe. Probably, yeah. If some monster doesn’t come around to kick me off the wagon first. I’ve told you that before, though.”

“…Okay. Yes, you have, that’s. Yes. So then—?”

“What?”

“Why are you giving me a statement!?”

“To commiserate,” Daisy recited first, in the flat tone of compulsion—and then, “Shhh!”

“Tape recorder’s already on.”

“Yeah but Basira’s out there; she might—be asleep. It’s not a statement,” said Daisy. “Just a story.”

As usual Jon let himself fall into the trap. Was it a statement? By Institute standards, maybe not; he wasn’t sure it counted as a supernatural encounter, except from the rats’ perspective. And most of the fear in it was the rats’, too. He supposed you could call it an encounter with her own changing nature? Statement of Alice ‘Daisy’ Tonner, regarding her supernatural hunger and how she.

“But why would you feed me a story when the answer you come to at the end of it is that it’s better to starve?”

This time he didn’t mean to compel her—was sure he’d phrased it indirectly enough not to. But Jon was surer yet Daisy wouldn’t have given the answer she did except under compulsion:

“Because I felt sorry for you.” Then she winced, bared her teeth, shook her head; Jon wondered if she’d felt that one. It seemed like people usually didn’t—just heard themselves speak words they hadn’t meant to, and surmised what had happened from that. But maybe after so many in a row she’d begun to feel the static.

“For what? Why?”

“For feeling evil. Because it reminded me of me.” In her own voice: “Think maybe I wanted it off my chest, too.”

So, what? The moral high ground was alright for her, but he was too weak for it? Or, or not, what, spiritually advanced enough to walk that plane? Because he hadn’t been conscious for his six-month limbo between life and death, like she’d been in the coffin?

“But you resist, so—? Why wouldn’t you think I should starve too?” On the ocean floor of his stomach something evil emerged from its hole. “Hhh—wait, don’t answer that, I’m—”

Too late. “Because eating the statements doesn’t hurt anything. The ones already written down—just recording them, it’s harmless. And you can’t give me bad dreams anymore, so—ugh.” Jon opened his eyes to find Daisy clawing at her temples. She shook her head, to the extent she could without knocking into his. “I told you I'm trying not to do that anymore.”

I’m not ready, Jon had meant to say. But seeing how little she liked having answered, he wished he could claim it was for her sake he’d tried to stop her.

He still wasn’t ready to hear or think or talk about this, really. The top half of his belly seared with such pain he couldn’t think straight; lower down it squirmed. He felt perilously sick. His whole body wanted so badly to curl into a ball that his legs wouldn’t quit twitching against Daisy’s. He pressed his elbows into his sides, while his hands hovered, pathetically he was sure, just over the top and center of a stomach he feared would pounce if he dared touch it.

But he felt like owed her some proof he’d been listening. “Do…?”

“Judge people. Decide what’s right for them.”

“I see,” Jon lied; that was all he could manage for now. In truth he needed a break before he could even parse what she had said.

“Turns out I can’t lie to myself under compulsion either. I didn’t think that was the reason?—thought I was just not judging you.”

“I think”—he pushed himself back from her, sure for a second that he was about to be sick. It passed, but his breath caught on it as on panic, so he couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.

Especially not since Daisy too shot upright, her nails loudly scraping the cushion behind her as she hurled herself against it. “Shit—turn around—not on the couch—”

“I’m okay, it’s.” He did turn around, just to ease her mind, but the motion required had quite the opposite effect on him. Jon heard the sounds of ragged breath and whimpering, then recognized his own voice behind them.

Daisy’s hands came to perch one on the back of his shoulder, the other on his side between rib and pelvis. “Don’t worry about it, just get it out. We’ll clean it up later—just like last time, remember?” The fingertips of the hand on his side twitched back and forth at his stomach’s very outer edge.

“N—o, I.” He swallowed. “I think I’m alright.” Tried opening his eyes. Nope, not ready. His breath shuddered again. Daisy’s hands vanished from his shoulder and side; he heard the flapping sound of a blanket being shaken out, then felt it flutter and settle on top of him. Must’ve got dislodged when he rolled over, though he was warm enough now he hadn’t noticed. Dimly he recognized this as a victory.

Her hand moved to stroke his back; she kept saying Shhh, but not in the harsh way she had earlier. “You, uh.” Again Jon swallowed, though what ailed him was a lack of spit rather than excess of it. “You weren’t nearly this nice last time.”

“What?” The hand on his back stilled. “I was too! I tied your hair back for you! I let you ruin my jumper by wiping your pukey mouth on it! I sat with you, on the cold hard floor, in front of the toilet, and let you babble all your egghead theories to me about vomit and the Corruption, even though I’d been sick not two days before, and could barely stand the smell even without you philosophizing about it—”

“No, I meant—the time before, when you. Never mind.”

“Oh—when I had to clean it up?” Jon nodded, hoping she’d be able to tell that from the back of his head. “Yeah, well. Guess I like you better now.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“Me neither.” And yet she scooted closer to him, hooking her chin over his shoulder. Her hand came to rest on his belly again, its heel in the hollow at the edge of his pelvis. “This okay? You alright with touch right now?”

In response Jon felt around for her hand. When he found it he slotted his fingers between hers, pulled her hand to a sicker-feeling place a few inches higher up, and left his there on top of it.

“Right,” Daisy laughed—“my mistake.” She dragged their combined hands very gently back and forth across the place he’d brought them to. “This where you’re feeling yuckiest?”

His breath caught again, but with surprise and relief this time. With his free hand Jon covered his eyes, willing himself not to think about how ridiculous he must seem to her right now. “That’s, er. That’s perfect, yes.”

“Sure.”

“Though actually—do you think—maybe a slightly… longer stroke?”

Again she laughed. Her hand went limp under his. “Backseat driver. Alright, show me how it’s done.”

It took him a minute to determine that himself. He tried pulling her hand back and forth past his navel, but that grated against something sharp inside. Supposed he couldn’t consult the Oracle for this. Up and down, maybe? Yes, that would do. Or a circle perhaps. Anti-clock—? No, clockwise, definitely. Much better.

Once they’d got that sorted out, Jon said, “I wonder if… you’d let me Ask. One more question.”

“Seriously? I can feel how stuffed you are; how could you possibly want more? Five minutes ago you nearly puked.”

“I’m just—curious, alright? I won’t be sick, I promise.”

“Fine.”

“Did you ever… throw them up?”

“I didn’t eat them, Jon. Told you that already.”

“Alright, poor choice of words. Did you ever—” he tried to think how best to phrase it. “When you threw up regular… people food. Did something of the rats ever come up with it?”

“Yeah. I only got sick once in the time I was doing it, but, I think so, yeah. Thought I was just really out of it at the time though. They didn’t make me sick, I don’t think—just another stomach bug, like the one I gave you. One of those bugs where everything has to come out? And it came on me in the middle of the night, so the last thing I’d”—a pause to sigh; her hand slipped out of his, presumably to make air quotes, but then took it again before he could think of somewhere else to put it—“‘eaten’ was the rats. Not as many as usual; I was already feeling slow that evening. But, yeah. They… it wasn’t their actual bodies, though, okay? I thought I was just dry heaving at first—you know when you’re hanging over the toilet bowl because you know you’re gonna be sick—”

Jon squirmed, fighting a temptation to cover his ears. “Yes, thank you, I’m familiar with—”

“—but you can’t get anything solid up yet, you just retch and drool and cough into the bowl. Well it started then, and then, some of it got mixed up with my sandwich. It was like I… felt their fear, like I—became them, for a second. Each one of them.”

She’d been right; it was too much. God, please don’t make him be the rat! Jon bit his lip ducked his head to his chest curled his toes bent his knees, anything, trying to barricade the doors against the onslaught of information. He pressed his and Daisy’s combined hands hard into the place where his stomach jutted forth from ribs for fear if he didn’t try to equalize the pressure inside from without he might burst like a sheep in clover and flood this whole room in half-ruminated text, a cloud of serifed letters scuttling heinously all over himself and Daisy like half-formed spiders.

“I don’t know how I knew that’s what it was,” Daisy went on. “It wasn’t like I saw the scene again, or heard the crunch, or felt the. Anything like that. I just—was the rat. I was prey. Just for a second. And knew that I—me, as in.” Again her hand slipped out of his. “The Hunter, was about to kill me. And… then it faded and I was me again until the next one.”

Her hand returned to the dome at the top of his gut where he’d last set it, but its ghosts on his palm and between his fingers remained cold. She brushed the hand up and down his belly, airily—oblivious to how its muscles clenched and undulated. Jon panted and forced himself to focus on her hand and nothing else. How it bumped and shuddered when his stomach’s shape morphed under it. How at the end of his every exhale her touch became so light it tickled. This was the present Daisy, and the present Jon. Here on this couch in the Institute basement. Both thin, her bony ilium pressed closer to his sacroiliac joint than was quite comfortable. Warm, except up one leg where the blanket let in a draft.

The one who’d tried to prey on him was long gone. If anything he was the one feeding on her, now. And they just laid on the couch together, massaging her horrors into more comfortable shapes inside him.

“That enough?”

Jon grunted an incredulous huff. “Too much,” he admitted, unable to keep the strain out of his voice. “You were right—I, uh. Didn’t know stomachaches came this size.”

Her laugh sounded affectionate. The lines up and down his stomach morphed into circles around it. “Ha—look how much higher your belly comes up on this side. That must be where your ribs were.”

“Yes, I’ve. Noticed that before, thanks.”

“Think you’ll keep it all down?”

“Hope so.”

“Good luck. Wouldn’t want you to have to relive the rats again.”

Oh, god.

“The less said about it the—better I’ll feel, I think.”

“Well that’s a change,” Daisy mused, patting his stomach as though in summation. “I should get to bed. Be alright on your own?”

“Er.” No, no, no, god please no, not alone yet with all these? “Yes, alright. I should be fine.”

She laughed again. “I’ll stay til you fall asleep.”

--

(For Daisy’s take on “the time before,” when she had to clean up his vomit, see Abyss of Possibilities; to view the drawing in less-bad resolution, see this post)

#stuffing #hunger kink #nausea #stomachache #a shifty tract #nonsearchable tma tag #me: writes a story about eating information #also me: god why is this so LONG why did i have to go off on so many TANGENTS #uhhhhhhh hm let's think

[petitprincess1]

My Roommate’s a Demonic Deer Ch4 (1 Week and A Half Later)

AO3 Link Summary: Alastor and Anthony have small talk on the couch after a fun "game", leading to Al feeling choked up after the human gets a call. Words: 1,300 Warning: Gun use, drug (cigarettes, but just in case) use, and slight panic attack. ~~~ Cherri asked Anthony on the phone, “So, like, when can I meet this mysterious man?”

Anthony was currently in a play bunny outfit, hiding behind the couch, while listening to Alastor hum a little song. He thought Al told him that the song was “Placing it on The Ritz Cracker” or some shit like that. Either way, he was probably going to get killed for just playing around. 

All Anthony did was just walk up to him, while he was reading the newspaper, and ask if he was ready to go hunting for the Easter Bunny. It seemed like Alastor was into it, even placing his hands on Tony’s hips. However, when the human felt something in-between his legs, he got shocked at seeing the double barrel of a shotgun.

He definitely didn’t expect Al to actually start shooting him. What was even weirder was that the bullets never seemed to cause damage to the furniture or walls and that he seemed to have an endless amount of bullets in the gun. Doesn’t matter, however, since Anthony was sure that they would still cause damage to himself.

Anthony spoke to Cherri as he watched Alastor from behind the island in the kitchen, “Uh...it’s kinda complicated. He’s a little...sensitive.”

Cherri snorted and joked, “Anyone is better than your boss and ya know that that’s the truth. Plus, sensitive guys are pretty cute. How old is he, by the way?”

The mortal hummed as he looked around the corner to see Alastor floating many objects around the room, while his antlers were growing outwards and angry looking. The radio demon’s eyes quickly glanced over at the kitchen, causing Anthony to quickly hide again. He whispered, “Probably like in his early to mid thirties.”

She went silent for a few seconds before questioning, “Dude, you okay? Why are you whispering suddenly?”

Anthony tensed up at hearing Alastor call out happily, while listening to his footsteps come near the kitchen, “Come on out, Anthony~ I heard that you were having a bad hare day, so I wish to help you~”

The human slid down closer to the floor and mumbled as he saw the double barrel appear, knowing that the tall demon could easily look down above the island. Tony mumbled with a long whine, “Do ya think I’d look bettah cremated or wearin’ my performance outfits in a pink and white coffin?”

As soon as Anthony asked that, there were suddenly numerous dull thuds against the floor, making the human slowly look up. He didn’t see Alastor anywhere, but did smell something that was somewhat spicy and sweet. Tony ignored Cherri panicking on the phone as he slowly stood up to see what was going on

Anthony saw the radio demon smoking a cigarette on the couch, causing him to slowly approach. Al was slumped over, looking slightly exhausted and even having small dark circles under his eyes, while his jacket was lying on the back of the couch. ….At least that’s what an observant person would notice, but this was Anthony. He just exclaimed, “Where did that cigarette come from? Did your gun turn into that!?”

Alastor blinked at him as he glanced up at him, blowing a plume of smoke, and smirked, “Everything that I’ve done so far...and this is what you question? What an odd fellow you are.”

The demon looked up and down at the human’s lightly bruised arms and neck, grimacing a bit. He then raised his hand to snap his fingers, hesitated for a few seconds, and then just snapped anyway. A blanket wrapped around Anthony tightly as a cigarette appeared in his mouth. The mortal squirmed a bit and huffed, “Look, I know yer weird about sexual shit, but ya don’t gotta wrap me up like this. Also, how am I gonna light my ci-”

Before he could finish, Al pulled on the blanket and brought Anthony closer to him. He lit the cigarette with his own after breathing it in and then pushed the human away. He breathed out smoke and mumbled, “You talk too much…”

Tony would question why Al was okay with intimacy like that and not others, but he didn’t want to deal with the headache. He looked down at his phone on the floor and saw his wallpaper, making him think that Cherri hung up. Luckily, the girl was still at work or else he would have to explain this weird situation. ...Well, explain it even more.

The mortal took a drag of the cig and then immediately started hacking harshly, getting tears in the corner of his eyes. Anthony broke away from his blanket prison and coughed a bit more before asking, “What the hell are in these!?”

Alastor mocked, “Probably tobacco. Have you never smoked before?”

“Ya know what I meant! Also, I have, but...does this not have a filter on it?”

“Pfft! Why would it? Cigarettes have never had…” The demon trailed off when he saw Anthony hold up a cigarette from a box nearby, showing that it had a yellow filter at the end. Al blinked and then shrugged, “Well, I suppose I’m wrong!”

Anthony tried to take another drag, breathed a bit of smoke, and then started violently coughing again. He held onto his chest and snuffed out the cig. As he mumbled about feeling as if he was about to vomit, his phone began buzzing on the floor. The mortal tensed up when he saw the message and who it was from. Tony leaned down and grabbed the phone, while Al suddenly had an odd feeling in his chest.

Alastor groaned at the chest tightness, as well as a churning feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was enough to make him get up and have the need to start pacing around. He watched Anthony get up and hurry up to grab a coat, announcing, “I gotta go. Val called me in and told me that I can come in as is, so that’s nice, I guess. Ya wanna come, Al?”

The demon looked at him and questioned as he paced, taking a long drag, “Hmmm...where do you work?”

“Oh, a porn-”

“Nope!” Alastor exclaimed as he felt an odd choking sensation come about, causing him to breathe quick, shallow puffs, as he heard Anthony mumble about him being a prude. He watched the human reach towards the door, pulled the cigarette out from his mouth, and shouted, “Anthony!”

The human flinched and looked at the demon with a confused expression. Al felt the feeling just slightly deflate, making him feel like he could breathe again. ….Perhaps it was nothing, and yet he still needed a bit more than just a stare. The demon grinned, “Pick up some shrimp on your way back. I don’t think I can take another mouthful of your oily cooking.”

Anthony blinked and then snorted, rolling his eyes as he left, “Yeah, love ya too, Al.”

The human left the apartment and Alastor alone. The choking feeling came back, but it was slightly eased and he felt a bit happier. He wasn’t sure why. Why did he feel sick whenever Anthony went to work? Al just shook his head snuffing out his cigarette and thought that maybe he was feeling too drained. He just needed to eat, that’s all. ...That’s all.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel angel dust #hazbin hotel au #human au #human angel dust #alastor the radio demon #alastor #radiodust #hazbin hotel fic #my writing #writing #writers on tumblr #fanfiction #hazbin #alastor x angel dust #angel dust x alastor

[cecevolume]

On The List (Part One)

Prompt from @halfbloodfox:  I’m looking for something where Lucifer has to take care of Trixie. Maybe, Decker is stuck at court testifying on a case, Dan is whothefuckknowswhere, Maze is on a hunt and at school Trixie gets hurt or sick. Surprise, Lucifer gets the call. He’s on The List? Since when? During Season 2 or 3, pre 4 nonsense at least. What do you think?

This was...unexpected.  And perhaps a little unprecedented.

Just a half hour before, it had been a semi-normal day for he and the detective, dressed in their best--well, not him, but the respect for the court was there--as Chloe waited to be called to testify.  Per usual, he tagged along, a charming ace in the hole, just in case.

But then his shirt had started buzzing outside the large double doors; to be more exact, his phone was ringing.

“Lucifer,” Chloe hissed as a clerk eyed them while they passed by, “turn it off vibrate!”

Smiling winningly, he reached for his chest pocket, purring, “An honest mistake, Detective; I assure you, I know proper procedure for the courtroom.”  He glanced at the screen, eyebrow raising as a bell of familiarity rang in his head.  “Should I know this number?” he asked, turning the screen towards Chloe.

She frowned, taking the phone from him as she murmured, “That’s Trixie’s school.”

“But why--”

Holding up a hand to stop him, she answered, “Hello?  Yes, Ms. Hendersen, I’m being brought to testify today.  Uh huh.  Oh, no, did you try Dan?  Of course not.  No, no, it’s not a problem; I’ll send Lucifer to pick her up.”  She paused for a long time, a muscle ticking in her brow.  “That’s a question for him at another time, don’t you think?  Uh huh.  Yeah, goodbye.”

Tilting his head, Lucifer asked, “Was that Trixie’s lovely school administrator--”

“Don’t.  Even.  Star,” Chloe growled, handing him back his phone.  The door beside them opened just a crack and the DA motioned for her to join them.  With a nod, she didn’t spare Lucifer a glance as she moved to the doors.  “I need you to pick up Trixie; she threw up in math class.  I’ll leave here as soon as I get the okay.”  Before she squeezed in the door, she muttered quickly, “Ginger ale--she likes Canada Dry best--for her stomach, some toast or crackers to have in her system.  Make sure she takes little sips.  This should be done in a couple hours and then I’ll be home.”

“Detective--” he said in alarm, reaching towards her, but the door was already closed.  For a moment, he just stood there, wondering two things simultaneously: did Chloe really trust him with her sick offspring and why did the school call his phone?

It hardly mattered now, however, what made sense.  Sitting in his Corvette outside an elementary school, he found that he was...uncomfortable.  It wasn’t often there was a situation he found himself unable to figure out--in fact, the first hadn’t been until he’d met the detective two years before--yet here he was.  Sure, he’d learned how to occupy Trixie, but this was new territory.

How did one pick up a sick child from their school and adequately take care of them?

Taking a deep breath, he got out of his car, striding towards the doors.  How hard can it truly be? he wondered, confidence growing the closer he got to the building.  If Daniel can do it, of course I’ll be able to.

Following the signs to the “office”--a large, gray room with children’s paintings hanging everywhere, most of the space taken up by a quadruple desk with five women squished side by side at their computers--Lucifer idly took out his handkerchief, wiping his hands as he eyed several of the drawings.

Surprisingly, there were a few that showed a real talent, should they continue honing the craft.

“Hello?” one of the women greeted hesitantly to his back.  “Can I help you?”

He turned with a charming grin, noting the immediate softening of all the secretaries’ faces.  “Hello, ladies,” he answered, strolling to the desk with his hands in his pockets.  “I actually received a call from Debra--Ms. Hendersen, asking that I pick up Beatrice Decker-Espinoza.  I know I’m not her parent--”

“Oh, you’re the infamous Lucifer Morningstar!” the first woman cried, nearly tipping her chair backwards as she stood.  Holding out a hand, she added, “Trixie is through that door, in the nurse’s office.  Karen will go and grab her while you sign her out.”  She shoved a clipboard with an attached pen under his nose.  “Just her name, your name, why you’re picking her up, and the time.”

Holding the pen, he raised an eyebrow at the woman.  That was certainly easy.  Did she already know to expect a deal?  Or was this her idea of flirting?  The memory of Malcolm Graham flashed through his mind and his gaze turned foreboding.  “Is it truly that easy to just pluck a child from your facilities?” he demanded, anger burning in his belly.

“Oh, my, you’re right!  I do need your picture ID to compare your information to what we have in the system,” she answered quickly, blushing wildly.  “I’m so sorry, it’s just that Debra gave such a...thorough description of you, I completely forgot!”

He slowly reached for his wallet, pulling out his license and handing it to her.  “Why would a primary school have my information?”

“Well, after the...kidnapping,” she said slowly, peeking a quick glance at one of the other women, who dropped her head, “Ms. Decker updated the people on Trixie’s approved list.  We aren’t supposed to release her to anyone other than her parents, her grandparents, or you.  There is a Mazikeen Smith on here, too, but that’s on a call ahead basis.  But if Ms. Decker and Mr. Espinoza aren’t available, we’re to contact you first.”

Blinking in shock, he made a noncommittal noise in his throat, taking back his ID and signing out the urchin.  “I, uh, thank you for your diligence,” he murmured, spinning on his foot to stride towards the chairs lining the windowed walls.  He was allowed to just come to the school and pick up Chloe’s child whenever he felt like?  No permission, no questions, no call aheads necessary?

Chloe Decker trusted the life of her offspring in the hands of the Devil?

“Lucifer?” a small voice whined from behind him, making him turn back around.

Straightening his jacket and cuffs, he answered, “Your mother has been held up in court today, Spawn.  So she sent me with clear instructions.”  He’d already called Patrick at LUX to provide the Canada Dry and crackers.  “I’ll be taking care of you this afternoon, until she is finished.  Is that all right?”

The little girl nodded her head slowly, face pale as she reached for his hand.  When he didn’t immediately take it, tears started to fill her eyes and he panicked.

Taking her hand gingerly, he raised the other to wave at the women.  “Thank you very much for your help.”

Then they were off.

-.-

If she hadn’t felt so gross, Trixie might have giggled at the scene before her.  

Lucifer had brought her back to his penthouse, explaining that it was closer to both the courthouse and school, that her mother wouldn’t be too much longer.  She’d thrown up during the elevator ride, only half-listening as he tried desperately to comfort her in the weirdest ways--“I’ll have the cleaners come straight away; you don’t have to worry about cleaning it yourself”--when he’d picked her up, rushing her through the doors to the bathroom.

He’d waited there, awkwardly patting her back until she was finished.  He’d then ushered her through to the couch, saying, “Don’t worry, urchin; I’m sure I have a bowl somewhere, or at least something similar.”

And there he’d left her, bringing them to now.  His suit jacket was gone, the sleeves of his white undershirt rolled up.  He held a fuzzy black blanket in one hand, a paint bucket in the other, holding them out to her.  “I’m sorry it took so long; I had to go into LUX’s storage to find a...vomit receptacle.”  When she didn’t take it from him, he placed it directly beside her face on the floor, gripping both edges of the blanket to lay it over her.  “I don’t know if you have a fever or not, but I’ve noticed you and your mother enjoy your ‘snuggle blankets’, as it were.  This is the softest one I could find; I hope it’s...snuggly enough for you.”

She giggled a bit, sniffling.  “Thank you, Lucifer,” she murmured.  “Can I have some ginger ale?  And something to eat?”

Nodding curtly, he turned towards the hallway that led to his mysterious kitchen.  “I have a variety of crackers, from wheat to sesame to pepper; do you have a preference in this state?” he called from the other room, the sound of cabinets closing echoing his words.

“Do you have saltines?  Or the Ritz circle ones?” she asked.

He was silent for a long time before she saw him come back around the corner.  “Well, there’s no accounting for taste,” he sighed striding back in to the room.  Brandishing a crystal plate that held at least half a box of both saltines and Ritz crackers, he set it on the coffee table.  “And Patrick will be bringing your ginger ale up; I assume a case should be adequate for just a few hours?”

Smiling, she said, “That’s actually way too much.”  He started to open his mouth, but Trixie knew better than to push the teasing with him.  “Will you turn on the TV and watch with me?  My mom usually rubs my back when I’m sick.”

After a moment, he nodded, crossing to the mantle to grab the remote.  He sat on the opposite side of the couch, pressing some buttons as a projection screen rolled out from the ceiling, a projector starting to whirl from behind them.  “Is there a particular show or movie that you prefer?”

“Can we watch Secret Life of Pets?  It’s funny and it’s on Netflix,” she added when his jaw clenched.  “It’ll help me fall asleep.”

He perked up at that.  “Is sleep good for you at this point?  At some of my...parties, you’re supposed to keep the humans awake until they have finished vomiting.”

Nodding, she answered, “As long as you help me if I wake up and have to puke again, I should be fine.”

“Then I suppose I’ll just sit here and keep watch.”

She smiled as he pulled up the movie, though she really missed her parents.  Lucifer was doing a great job, but he didn’t know what he was doing.  Her mom knew right when she needed snuggles and gave them to her without her asking.  She might be nine years old, but that didn’t mean being sick wasn’t scary.  Especially when her stomach was still roiling and her throat and mouth burned....

“Are you all right, spawn?” he asked immediately, making her realize that she had started to silently cry.  “Are you going to be sick again?”

She shook her head, but that’s when the sobs started.  “I miss my mom,” she whispered between savage breaths.  “She always strokes my hair so I can fall asleep.”

While she got control of herself, Trixie felt him leave the couch for a minute, making her feel even more alone.  He was really trying, but he didn’t know what to do, and her mom didn’t have to ask her how to take care of her, and she wasn’t left alone to cry--

Hands gently pulled her off the throw pillow she’d been using, only to deposit her head on sweatpants-clad thighs.  She tilted her head back to see Lucifer wearing a bright green T-shirt and gray sweatpants (they still had a tag on them).  “I needed to change in case you don’t make it to the bucket,” he explained easily, reaching over for the remote once again.  “Now, lay back; I’ll attempt to stroke your hair, but you may need to direct me.”

Shocked, Trixie did as he said without a word, feeling his hand gently rest on her head.

She fell asleep to the sound of the elevator dinging.

This will be getting a part two shortly because it is getting very long! That will be Deckerstar though. :)

#halfbloodfox #trixie decker & lucifer morningstar #family fluff #trixie espinoza #trixie decker #lucifer morningstar #lucifer on netflix #step devil fanfiction #lucifer prompts

[kelleyish]

a new year’s post

There are approximately 15 minutes left in 2018.  i figured I’d squeeze in one more post before the end of the year.

First things first, I weighed in this morning and was another couple pounds down!  My final weight of 2018 is an even 326, which is about half a pound shy of 40 pounds lost in 11 weeks.  I beat my end-of-year goal by three pounds!

I am really excited about this.  I can’t believe how well my weight loss is going.  I’ve still had a few days that were very hard, and I’ve had more than a couple of cheats.  In fact in the last week I had a day where I broke down and ate a bag of microwave popcorn (with a 1/4 cup of melted butter poured over it) and one of those mini-sleeves of Ritz crackers.  But the next day I picked up and continued on as if it hadn’t happened.  I “kept calm and keto-ed on” as they like to say.

I can tell I’m smaller in other ways too.  I already mentioned my NSV at the movie theatre, where I wasn’t accidentally setting off the foot rest button anymore.  I’m also fitting into smaller jeans, and I can tell it’s a little easier to get up off the sofa and off the floor.  It’s also easier to reach everything when I’m showering or using the bathroom.  (I think I mentioned the last straw for me back in October was having trouble wiping my own ass, and that problem quickly resolved itself, thankfully.)  Things are finally looking up in this area of my life, and I’m thrilled.

Not everything this year has been great, of course.  I was laid off from work at the end of February.  As well as my weight loss is currently going, I really wish I’d been able to stick with keto back then, and I’d have 9 months under my belt instead of just 3 - and that belt would probably be way smaller by now, lol. But thinking that way is useless, and at least I managed to turn things around in October, instead of, for example, waiting until the new year.

Losing my job was a be-careful-what-you-wish-for situation.  I’d fantasize about quitting my job all the time (of course it was often a consequence of winning the lottery in my imagination) and being at home has been very freeing, but I also really struggle with self-motivation.  I am trying to be self employed but it’s been a very long and slow process and money is really becoming an issue now.  A smarter and less-lazy person than me would have gotten another job by now, as a bridge to self-employment.  But unfortunately I’m not ideal-me, I’m just me-me.  I don’t know what the future holds this year on that front.

I’m more lonely than ever, now that I’m at home.  I was friendly with most of my co-workers, and there was a general feeling of ‘we’re family’ at the office but as many people will tell you, it’s dangerous to feel that way about your employer.  Because when things get rough, it will become very clear you’re *not* family, and that’s what happened.  One of my co-workers was someone I’d call a real friend, who also got laid off at the same time.  I have tried to keep in touch with her through text, but the increasing amounts of time it takes her to respond to me have made it clear I wasn’t nearly as an important part of her life as she was in mine.  And it’s fine, I mean she has a family and kids, and I’m slowly letting her go because I’m not going to be *that weirdo*, you know?  It stings, but I’ll get over it.

I still miss my husband every day.  In a few months he will have been gone 5 years, and it’s really hard to believe.  I miss knowing that I was the most important person in someone else’s life, and vice-versa.  I miss having a partner, and a best friend.  It just fucking sucks.  I’m not sitting around crying all day about it anymore, but it still sucks.  It also makes me angry with myself that I’ve “wasted” almost 5 years being too fat to let myself entertain the idea of dating again.  I’m going to be 42 next year, and that just sounds so old in my head.  

I’m grateful I have my family, and I’m close enough with my sister that she’s my go-to person I text with on a regular basis.  I see my parents almost every week, and talk with my older brother a decent amount.  So it could be worse.  But it could be better.  I’m hoping 2019 will be The Year of Better, because I think I’m fucking due for it.

Well, the new year came and went about 40 minutes ago while I word vomited onto the internet.  I intended this to be a happier post but it got kinda dark at the end.  Sorry about that.

Happy New Year.

#my own posts #keto #weight loss #cancer sucks

[usoymilk]

Hello, I’m writing for the first time for today. Today was very odd. I’m going to start from the beginning.

I decided to wake up this morning and do a mile run on my treadmill. It was tough, probably because I hadn’t ran for a long time. When I finished, I was tired, I felt lazy, and kind of thirsty. Instantly, I decided to take a shower, as I usually take showers in the morning. I looked in my bathroom mirror- I was pretty pale. Actually, really pale. My face had no color (I’m usually bright red after a run) and my lips were extremely white. I didn’t really care at that point, I was like, oh, it’s because I haven’t ran in a minute! I’ll be fine, I’m going to eat breakfast after I shower anyway. My heart is beating fast at this point. That’s all I felt. So, I get into the shower, and I immediately do not feel good. I know: something is wrong. I’m brushing my teeth in the shower, and the taste of my toothpaste is ‘unappetizing.’ I feel extremely tired at this point- I stand while the water pours on me- my head resting against the tile wall. I push forward, I’m thinking, aw, just calm down, let’s get an apple and some PBfit and a yogurt after and lay down! Everything’s going to be okay! You did great during your run. Suddenly.. my stomach starts hurting TOO bad. At this point, I had just put shampoo in my hair, so I quickly rinse it off. I turn the shower off. I’m dripping wet. I didn’t dry my hair. I didn’t dry my skin. I rush to the toilet- I sit, and let it out. Wait.. God.. why do I feel horrible right now? This was not normal. I could not move from the toilet. I could not wipe myself. Keep in mind, I’m soaking wet and getting water all over my bathroom. Everywhere. And I’m on the toilet.. God. Feeling horrible. I wipe, then flush. Normally, I would have looked at what was in the toilet, especially since I didn’t feel well. Well, I didn’t have the energy to. Fine, I know what human waste looks like, and I certainly know for a fact that a lot came out of me. Obviously I felt it. At that point, I’m assuming that immediate relief would hit me. Okay, done, I pooped and I feel much better now! Right? Right? Nope. Wrong. Wait.. why is my mouth watering? Wait, wait! I know this feeling. Oh FUCK, I’m going to throw up. I’m going to throw up within two minutes. I’m still on the toilet. I poop again. A lot, again. I flush, but I didn’t wipe- I couldn’t- I couldn’t move, I just, my head was hurting and I was confused and wet with soaking dripping hair and skin everywhere and my feet were soaked in water and I was so confused, I felt my face getting paler. I knew what was coming next. I was going to throw up. Thirty seconds after my second waste session, keep in mind.. I hadn’t wiped after my second poop, so it’s not like I could turn around and just vomit into my toilet. Plus, I couldn’t even think about moving that much. That was too much movement for me. Fuck. So. I threw up. On my bathroom floor. Immediate relief. Oh, thank goodness, okay, I’m good now. NOPE. WRONG, again. I start crying. I was home alone today. I didn’t even have my parents to partially help me if I needed them to. I had a weird urge.. I weird urge to call out, ‘mommy,’ or ‘daddy,’ when I was puking. As if it were going to make me feel better? I know that’s extremely strange. I didn’t yell it out.. obviously no one was home.. but I yelled it in my head. I was crying, sitting on the toilet, I didn’t wipe myself, vomit was sitting at my feet, since I had to throw up right in front of me. My hair is wet as hell, my skin is wet as hell. I’m dripping wet from the shower, with vomit at my feet, tears dripping down my face, spit on my face, and I hadn’t wiped myself. What. Is. Going. On? Chaos.. crazy. I didn’t understand what was happening. I was so confused. So confused. What’s going on? Why did I poop so much and just vomit at my feet right now? What did I do? What is going on with me? My mouth is hyperventilating. I sit for a couple of minutes. I finally wipe. I stand up. Oh no. I’m seeing.. well, I’m not fucking seeing anything. My vision goes blurry- black and white fuzzy dots. I can’t hear anything. I put my towel around me and quickly go to my cupboard. I grab my

toaster. I put two slices of bread in. I can’t wait for it to finish. I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything. I grab a slice of bread and take a bite. I couldn’t chew. I couldn’t chew. It was so gross. I’m thinking: I’m running out of time. I’m running out of time. If I don’t eat right now then I will faint. I will pass out. I take the plain slice with me and hurry to the toilet again. I go again. I’m sitting on the toilet, slowly eating my slice of bread, forcing myself. It was gross. Normally, I would finish a slice like that in two minutes. It took me about five minutes to finish that one slice, that’s how small my bites were. That’s how slow my chews were. My vision starts coming back. My leg goes numb, my back starts hurting from slumping over. I’m still sitting in my wet, vomit covered bathroom. I sit with my head against the wall. I’m having weird thoughts at this point, partially hallucinative. Partially falling asleep. I close my eyes, and think: hah, what if my vomit just burned a hole in my bathroom floor? I’m finally feeling okay.. I clean up. I clean myself. I clean the vomit. I rush to the kitchen again, my towel wrapped around me- grab those two slices of toast that have been sitting in the toaster for around ten minutes at that point, grab a plate, and hurry to my bedroom- straight for my bed. I stack three pillows to support my back and head. I lay, slowly, very slowly, chewing and chewing my toast. It was heavenly in that moment. I finish eating. I was much better.

Later, I look in my bathroom. Holy fuck, my tile floor is ruined. That, funny thought that I was having? Well, it actually fucking happened. The acid in my throw up completely ruined my tile floor. Update: yes it’s still ruined, no it cannot be fixed. Fuck. I prepare more food in my kitchen; the apple that I wanted, some plain rice, more toast, and Ritz crackers. Later, after I was MUCH better, I got hungry so I ate some Honey Bunches of Oats.

That plain piece of bread from my loaf literally saved me. While I was pooping, throwing up, and crying, all I was telling myself was: it’s going to be okay. We will be okay, we will get through this. This pain is only temporary.

During my shower, I thought, fuck this shower, I can shower at any time, any moment, so if I need to use the bathroom RIGHT NOW, then I can go. Fuck my wet hair and wet skin. Like I said, I only shampooed my hair, but it was extremely rushed.. so it wasn’t really clean. I didn’t get to really shower today. And I shower everyday. It wasn’t a true shower session. It’s okay. I’ll shower tomorrow morning.

I think that is all that I have to say for now. I will put additions below this if I need to add anything. Today was really weird.. why did I poop a lot and throw up like that? And almost pass out? That was extremely odd. The only time that something remotely similar happened like that was when I ate less than 400 calories a day for a week and was exercising at night in secret. And then after that week mark, I got the same black and white fuzzy vision, not being able to hear anything, only being able to eat extremely slow, and pooping a lot. That was the first time.. today was the second time. Both times were really different but with some similar factors. I won’t get into much detail about my ‘first time’ since that’s not today’s topic. Anyways. I hope that if anyone reads this.. have a wonderful night. Today was horrible for me. Really confusing and I couldn’t understand one bit of it. Did that one mile run really kill me that much? Anyway, I wish you the best, have a wonderful night! Again, additions will be added below if I find that I need to add something!

EDIT ONE: I realized that this is my second post for today!

[myaekingheart]

Let's Take a Moment to Talk about Eating Disorders

This is the only thing that's been running in the back of my mind for days, weeks, maybe even months so I think it's time I sat down and really talked about this for a second. First off, I really hate myself. Let's just get that out of the way. If I didn't, I probably wouldn't be putting myself through so much torture. Not that I can even control much of this. The issue is that I know I have an eating disorder, but I just don't know what the fuck it is. I feel like eating disorders are very hit-or-miss in the diagnosis department. There's a handful of really well-researched and apparently common ones and then anything that doesn't fit the bill gets tossed into a junk drawer full of wide spectrum scenarios. I am one of those people in the junk drawer. I don't fit into any of the other boxes. I am an outlier, an unusual suspect. Of all the cases in which I am the strange, uncategorized lowlife, I never thought that the same would apply to eating disorders, as well.

Should I see a doctor or a therapist or something for all of this? Probably. Will I ever? I guess we'll see what happens. The thought of sitting in a room with a stranger going over all of this just comes off as unnerving and intimidating. Granted, not that spewing all of this nonsense out onto the internet is any better. At least here, I'm not guaranteed anyone will listen. I can tell you all I'm carrying the child of a one-eyed alien and you'd all probably go about your business as normal. But in a doctor's office, that's another story.  They're staring at you taking notes on everything you're saying and the worst part is that you're shelling out tons of cash for them to do so. Then they'll look over everything they wrote down and overanalyze you, diagnose you with fifteen million different problems, and hand you a prescription and send you on your way. Probably. I've never done this sort of thing before so I wouldn't know, but that's how I assume it happens. Either that or it turns into a commitment where you're obligated to return once a week to chat about your problems and your pseudo progress. What a waste of time. Just like this entire paragraph.

Anyways, back to the important shit: the whole reason I'm even typing out all of this crap at 8am on a Wednesday. I have some unidentified problem and I don't know how to fix it. I've always had problems but I feel like more recently, they've only gotten worse and that scares me. When I was a kid, I had some mild eating issues but I don't ever remember it being anything too drastic. My earliest memory of disordered eating was when I was about three. My parents were having some kind of party and all I remember is sitting on the floor in the basement-turned-playroom among all the other kids while a marathon of Mr. Bean tapes was playing on the TV. I specifically remember the one where he meets the queen, the scene in which he's having trouble with his fly and has his finger sticking out of it to look as if he's whipped his dick out. Lovely to think that Rowan Atkinson gave me just the slightest first glimpse into understanding male genitalia. But anyways, I don't remember what exactly happened at this party to make me do this but somehow I must've spiralled into panic and that manifested itself in a refusal to eat. I went almost a full 24 hours without eating, if I remember correctly, and was fixed only when my mom whipped out a vintage Fisher Price nurse we fondly called Nurse Peggy who convinced me to nibble on some Ritz crackers. I don't have too many other wildly vivid memories of Nurse Peggy but according to my parents, she needed to be whipped out A LOT. I guess I was just one of those kids who didn't like to eat, or was a wildly picky eater. I remember panicking one time because my mom made tuna noodle casserole, one of my favorites, but there was a dark piece of mushroom in it that I swore was the missing leg off one of my little plastic ladybugs and it terrified the fuck out of me. But yeah, so this shit has evidently been going on for quite some time.

Ironically enough, around the same time this eating bullshit started, so did my anxiety. My very first panic attack had to have been when I was about three years old, as well. My mom and I were on ebay looking at a vintage Fisher Price castle when I guess I got so excited that I spiralled into a full-blown anxiety attack. I remember becoming suddenly overwhelmed with a loss of control over my body, shaking and hyperventilating and feeling like I was going to be sick. I have a very distinct memory of my mom tucking me into her bed and calling her own mother in an absolute panic, asking her what the hell she ought to do and being fully ready to drive me to the emergency room if need be. Obviously I calmed down after a while but it was the most terrifying experience of my young life. Little did I know that it was only the first of many panic attacks. Probably about ten or so years ago, I was officially diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. In fifth grade, I was having panic attacks every single night to the point where it became disgustingly routine. My doctor took what I told her into consideration, diagnosed me, and prescribed me some anti-anxiety meds. They didn't last very long. Sure, they made me feel great but all I could think about was what my doctor told me about there being a high risk of addiction. I've never been one for medications for that exact reason (when I was little, during Red Ribbon Week one year we were literally given a coloring page about how you shouldn't take medicine if you don't need it and that doing so can kill you-- I distinctly remember it was two panels of two kids in a bathroom and I'm pretty sure there was a medicine cabinet filled with drugs and it was all very Schoolhouse Rock-esque in style but carried a very dark and brooding message). That coupled with the fact that the medication gave me some pretty hefty bathroom issues, I gave up on it after a couple of days. I know you shouldn't quit any medication without a doctor's consent but quite frankly, I didn't give a fuck. I wanted off and I wanted off now. Looking back, sometimes I wonder if giving up on those pills was the wrong decision, if I would've been better off if I had continued them all these years. Sometimes I wonder if I needed them more than I was willing to admit. Anxiety has affected and influenced every aspect of my life from irrational panic attacks during college orientation to trichotillomania during times of stress or when I'm insomniatic to, you guessed it, eating disorders.

Sometimes I feel like my brain is a playground and all the disorders going on in my head are small children running rampant together at recess, playing tag and hide and go seek. They all work in conjunction with one another like the cogs of a clock, winding together and grinding together. Anxiety is the queen bee, the line leader, and everything else follows suit in response to it. I pull my hair out sometimes because I'm anxious. I don't sleep because I'm anxious. I don't like high ceilings because they make me anxious. I don't eat because I'm anxious. And if anxiety was to have a little sister, it would be called emetophobia. I've been emetophobic for as long as I can remember, even though for the longest time I didn't have a word for the disorder. It was just that terrible, debilitating fear of throwing up. There was one girl back in first and second grade who used to tease me about it. She'd just sit there at lunch and say puke or barf or vomit and I'd instantly lose my appetite and feel woozy. I wonder if she ever regrets doing that to me. I wonder if she even has any idea the affects that had on me as a kid. Obviously nobody thinks vomiting is pleasant, even those with the more well known eating disorders who induce themselves (I doubt they find the actual act pleasant, regardless of how purging themselves makes them feel) but with me, the hatred and discomfort toward it is so extreme that it-- you guessed it-- gives me panic attacks. This has been perhaps the most recent culprit of my eating issues as of late, this emetophobia. And unfortunately, this isn't the first time something like this has happened.

When I was a kid, during the time I was getting panic attacks every night, one of the big things I feared was vomiting. A few days after my birthday that year, I had eaten a slice of leftover cheesecake at 9:34pm while watching reruns of I Love Lucy and later that night, I violently threw up. I still even remember what it looked like ten years later if that gives you any indication of just how bad this vomit phobia is. The cheesecake tasted like coffee and because of this, I couldn't stand the smell of coffee for a year or two afterward, having massive freakouts when my parents would make their nightly cups and forcing them to spray Febreeze throughout the entire house to try and mask the scent. To this day, the smell of coffee still sends a shiver down my spine. One of the main reasons why I don't drink it. Because of this experience, however (and the fact that almost every time I have vomited, it's been at night), I quickly fell into this vicious cycle of situational restriction. I refused to eat after dark out of the absolute fear that nighttime alone would cause my vomiting. This honestly became incredibly debilitating, and was especially a nuisance when daylight savings time ended and it began to get darker earlier. I'd constantly try and get my family to cater to this irrational fear, begging for dinners as early as 4pm just so I could avoid the possibility of thowing it all up after dark. Eventually, this all somehow petered out and I got back onto a more normal eating schedule but for the longest time, this was a massive problem and I'm terrified to say that I think it may be making a comeback.

The past few months have been pivotal for me. I spent a year straight toiling away in college in order to get my associate's degree as quickly as possible, then literally the very next day after my last final exam, I moved 300 miles away into an apartment with my boyfriend. It's been taking a while to adjust and I still find myself having some troubles even now three months later. In a way, a part of me feels like perhaps I wasn't entirely ready to move out in the first place. I can't drive, I've never had a job. I basically fall behind in every single aspect of adulthood except academically. And even though my boyfriend and I had been planning this months ahead of time and spoke of moving in together very early in our relationship, it still feels like everything moved outrageously fast. Living on my own has been wildly different than living with my parents, as well, both for the good and the bad. The good involves a newfound sense of freedom and the excitement of starting a new life-- one in which my boyfriend and I are not long distance, the beginning of spending the rest of our lives together. The bad, however, includes a chaotic aimlessness, a lack of structure, and crippling reponsibility. In the short few months I've been living on my own, I've found myself spiraling into a series of strange habits that are probably good for my finances but bad for my mental health, and the majority of them revolve around eating. First and foremost is the comeback of the nighttime fears. Because my boyfriend works retail, he works a broad range of hours that can fall anywhere from early morning shifts at 6am to closing shifts where he doesn't come home until almost midnight. This makes our routine very unstable because things change every day. Some nights we'll eat dinner at a solid 7pm and other times, food won't even be a thought until almost one in the morning when he gets home and has taken some time to relax. In a perfect world, this would be great. I always wanted to live aimlessly with zero structure, just eat and sleep whenever I please. Now that I'm here, though, the implications are terrifying. I've been getting panic attacks every single night for the past month or two whenever I eat without fail. But they're not the normal types of panic attacks that involve hyperventilating and full-body trembling and sweaty palms. Instead, these are much quieter and more akin to a persistent fear than anything else. It's a rising in my chest, a lump in my throat, the feeling that I can't swallow or that the food is going to come back up like acid reflux. It's the constant feeling that at any second, my chair is going to tilt back or a giant hand is going to peel the ceiling away or the floor will cave in and an immense gravity wil suck me down to the earth's core. This isn't so much a problem with breakfast or lunch or whatever the fuck you can consider my daytime meals these days. It's only at night when things get heavy and I feel like everything is caving in. Because of this, I feel like I can't eat. Even if I wanted to, even if I'm starving, I physically cannot bring myself to overcome these feelings and just eat. Every time I try, my throat tightens up and I'm seized by this overwhelming sensation of something rising up within me and my body jolts in the same way as when someone sneaks up behind you and touches your shoulder or your back or your arm. I spend my nights hiding this as I glance at my food, shift uncomfortably in my seat, rub the back of my neck or tug on my earlobe or squeeze my foot, constantly chanting over and over again in my head to just breathe, that I'm fine, that I'm not going to be sick. For a while, I just attributed all of this to leftover symptoms of a cold I had a few months back. I had insane postnasal drip which, as an emetophobic, I refused to hock up and spit out so it just stayed in my system building up and circulating and choking me. A part of me is still convinced that's part of the problem. But now I know that it's also so much more than that. It's not just leftover phlegm, it's also anxiety and restriction and absolute fear.

The other big contributing issue here has to do with obsession. Obsession with ingredients, obsession with calories, obsession with body image. This is where the more textbook features of eating disorders come into play. I've always had a love-hate relationship with my body image. I've always been very petite, always the shortest kid in my elementary school classes and I could still fit into size 3T skirts when I was in, like, second grade. At first, it wasn't anything other than just being small. I was still a healthy weight for my height and age, I had some baby fat on me. I looked fine. Second grade, however, was when everything hit the fan. I think at the end of the day, it all boils down to my teacher. I remember her as this chubby woman with gray hair and glasses who kind of reminded me of Ursula from The Little Mermaid. She was the first teacher I ever had who never blatantly praised me. All my other teachers were incredibly kind and nurturing women who saw so much potential in me and made me feel like I was capable of anything. I'm not saying that this is entirely the greatest tactic just because I don't think we should teach our children that they are the best ever and that they can do absolutely anything no matter what (just hang on here, I'm not sadistic, I'm making a very valid point), but I'm not saying that being really tough on them is great either. I firmly believe in teaching our children that they can do whatever they set their minds on given that they work hard. That success is directly influenced by effort but that they can accomplish anything so long as they just work for it. It's a very Tiana-esque method (from The Princess and the Frog). My second grade teacher, however, was one of those really tough women. I always felt like nothing I did was ever good enough for her. I remember getting freaked out after she lectured us on the dangers of plaigiarism and watched us sinisterly as we worked on a classwork assignment about it, then graded us harshly and marked points off if even a snippet of a sentence was exactly like the passage. She also made us use those stupid rubber grips on our pencils that forced us to hold them a certain way and she'd yell at us if we took them off. Now, for some kids I understand that this kind of discipline is good for them but I was not like most kids. I started reading when I was two and always colored inside the lines. In third grade, I found out I was mentally gifted and spent the rest of my elementary school career spending one full day a week doing additional classwork in gifted programs. My mind has a very specific way of working that this bitch was not tolerant to. It was exactly like that quote about how you can't test a fish on it's ability to climb a tree and expect it to do well. No matter what I did, if I didn't do things her way, she wasn't satisfied and that was really detrimental to my self esteem. It was this year that I started really changing for the worst. I lost all my baby fat and became incredibly thin. I was still a super picky eater, restricting myself to things like carrots + dip and chicken nuggets. This was also about the time when I started becoming really moody and disagreeable, which has honestly never changed since. I used to come home from school in a really good mood, like my parents would pick me up and I'd be happy and bubbly and ramble on about my day. Instead, now I was snappy and rude and easily frustrated. School wasn't coming to me as easily as it used to. I'd spend hours staring at one homework page struggling to figure things out and breaking out into tears because I just couldn't grasp it. Granted, this was never an issue with vocabulary  homework, which I excelled at no matter what, but math homework was the devil. My dad and I would get into heated arguments about it because I just could not understand no matter how hard he tried to help me. I'd get angry with him because he'd try to show me the solution in a manner that was different than the way my teacher taught us in class and I was so hellbent on doing everything to cater to the teacher's methods that I would lose my mind if anyone even so much as considered forcing me to do things a different way. Again, this harkens back to that god-awful second grade teacher. This was a recurring thing throughout all of school, even to this day. I have constantly felt obligated to the best in everything I do, whether that's academically or socially or personally. Despite my academic success, socially I've hardly ever been fluent. There was a time as a young kid when I was very outgoing and unfiltered but after years of being bullied and just pushed around, I gradually crawled into my shell to the point where sometimes I can't even fully be myself around my own parents or boyfriend because I get nervous or second guess my decisions, overthinking reponses until it's too late. To everyone else not within my social circle, I'm just really quiet and perhaps a bit intimidating. The resting bitch face is strong with this one. I struggled to retaliate against the harsh words of classmates or the pressures of friends who craved popularity, attempting to force myself into a box in which I did not fit. I was that lanky nerdy kid with the glasses and crooked, oversized teeth who looked like a walking skeleton with pigtails. Sometimes I look back at picture of myself as a kid and wonder how the fuck I didn't even die, I was so goddamn skinny. My childhood best friend came from an Italian family who was very focused on good food. Looking back, it's no wonder I'd sometimes catch her mother glaring at me at the dinner table because I just never fucking ate. I'd take a few bites and then say I was done, then run back off with my friend to play. I don't know how I even had any energy, honestly. I swear I must have been running on empty.

High school, as I remember it, saw a brief intermission in my eating issues. There were a few instances where things were difficult for a time but they weren't anywhere near as monumental as my childhood eating issues, I don't think. Rather, my focus in high school was more on rejecting college, having fun with my friends, and obsessing over boys. Things didn't really hit the fan again until my first year as a full-time college student. As an adult, this is when I began to take things a little more seriously in regards to eating disorders. This was when my IBS started, which has remained a staple in my digestive issues ever since. Everything I ate made me double over in pain on the bathroom floor so I resolved to just not eat. Can't suffer from digestive cramps if you have nothing to digest. This was obviously directly linked to a lot of personal stresses I was facing in my life, what with all the changes that were getting tossed at me left and right. It was a very monumental time filled with a lot of new experiences and fears. I was trying to adjust to the fact that I was actually an adult now and that I'd never step foot in my high school again (which, even though I hated, I had grown rather attached to), never hang out with my friends again (because the majority of them left me), never pass my crush in the hallway ever again (granted, he graduated a year before me and I'm living with him now so that all worked out). The minute winter break started, I caught a nasty cold during which I was sleeping a lot and barely eating. It wasn't until after this that I realized something was seriously wrong with the way I looked. I had always been thin but this was like advanced thin. This was needing a belt on size zero jeans thin. This was dangerously thin. From that point onward, my obsession with my weight and eating habits has been an uphill battle of more adult proportions. I struggled for months afterward to get back on track, to gain the weight back, to push through the crazy intense IBS pains and start really eating again once and for all. It worked for a time and things went relatively well. I got back on track, I started adjusting to college, I got a boyfriend who cares deeply about me. Things were going well. Now, however, is when I feel like I'm slowly slipping off the wagon again.

Because of timing, I spent from August 2016 to August 2017 in school non-stop so I could get my degree and move in with my boyfriend when the lease on his old apartment expired and his roommate moved in with his own girlfriend. I didn't mind doing this. After all, it meant earning my degree quicker and moving in with my boyfriend sooner. A year straight of school wasn't all that awful anyways. Summer courses weren't really anything to write home about, I got through them and then I was done. It was no big deal. Or at least not until finals week. Things started out alright but I was on a massive time crunch. Everything was chaotic, a massive whirlwind. I felt so much pressure to do well, knowing that if I failed any of my tests it would drop my grades and I'd put myself at risk of having to retake classes and essentially ruining everything. I was really hard on myself about academics and added even more stress by procrastinating on packing. A part of me didn't quite register that all of this was really happening in the first place, not until I started moving all of my things into boxes and seeing my room grow barer and barer every day. The peak of the week came the night of my history final. My teacher was incredibly disorganized and let things overflow into the very last day of class so that not only did we have a final to worry about, but we had to wade through an hour and a half of boring presentations beforehand. I was suffering from a rather nasty headache that day, some jaw pain probably caused by a wisdom tooth coming in, so I took what I thought was plain ibuprofen before class. I gulped down two pills and thought I was good to go. What ensued was basically evidence as to why I always reject medication. As it turns out, the pills I took werent't actually ibuprofen but migraine meds with massive amounts of caffeine in them which, as I have recently discovered, I am intolerant to. This would further explain why the coffee flavored cheesecake as a kid sent me into a panic attack and made me puke, why premade brownies are potentially dangerous (my boyfriend and I bought organic brownies from Lucky's Market a few months back that had non-alkalized cocoa powder in them which, surprise surprise, has 4x the caffeine was cocoa powder processed with alkali. I had one fucking miniature brownie and within minutes I was shaking, hyperventilating, and ran to the bathroom on the verge of throwing up. I also realized just today that this also may have been the reason why I vomited a few years back after having eaten a brownie at a Disney resort), etc. I was struggling through the entire night, shaking uncontrollably with sweaty palms. I was dizzy and constantly felt like I was going to puke. I barely made it through my final exam but forced myself to finish because I knew I didn't have time to reschedule. This incident has drastically affected my own eating habits, however. Ever since, I have been wildly obsessed with what's in my food, shying away from sweets and always checking ingredients labels and refusing to drink any soda but Sprite (which, thank the lord, is both delicious and caffeine free). That moment has made me insanely paranoid, though, and a little too mindful (in the bad way) of everything I put into my body. I am so terrified of ever putting myself through something like that ever again that it leads me to restrict even more than normal. The same goes for the way my IBS affects my eating habits, as well. I'm constantly previewing menus for potential restaurants I might end up going to, thinking long and hard about the food I'm going to order. There are certain places where I don't even deviate on the menu, I stick to the same thing every single time I go there no matter what. I am terrified of trying something new and having an adverse reaction to it. With that in mind, I've just come to terms with the fact that restricting just seems easier. None of this is anything new, though. I've been restricting for as long as I can remember. There is, however, one other contributor that is new and that is finances.

Up until now, I have lived under my parents' roof where they paid for everything and I didn't have to worry one bit. They'd let me pick out whatever I wanted in the grocery store and the kitchen was free reign. I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and that was great. I didn't think about restricting as much back then, except for when it came to IBS. Now, however, things are different. My parents support me financially when it comes to bills and rent but other than that, I am basically on my own using whatever financial aid money I have leftover from my past year of school. I can afford things but I know that until I get a job or start school back up in January and get more financial aid, that that money is what is going to carry me through things like grocery trips and dinners out. It's incredible how much more analytical you become when it's your money that starts being spent on necessary things. Because of this, I've found myself and my relationship with food transforming and probably not for the better. My boyfriend and I are very aimless when it comes to grocery shopping. We don't meal plan, we haven't been couponing, we don't write shopping lists, and we don't seem to make a habit of rationing meat out for multiple meals. We basically just go to the grocery store, grab whatever we want, and hope for the best at the checkout counter. Coming from a home where my parents meticulously plan grocery store trips and buy certain things in bulk, this is a cold shock to me and it's difficult to figure out how to navigate. What I lack in physical lists, I try to make up for in overthinking during the trip itself which then only makes me come off as slow and confused. My boyfriend even described it like I was acting drunk once but it's all because my brain is trying to process so much all at once, like walking into a test after having not studied and never even attended a class. There's a lot going through my head and not a lot of time for me to process it. I don't like doing things this way but I don't know if I even have the motivation to work towards being a more organized shopper. But anyways, because of this our grocery costs tend to rack up pretty quickly which makes me feel guilty and almost uncomfortable since I know we only end up getting a limited number of meals out of that haul. This is where the restricting comes in. Grocery money is always in the back of my mind which essentially translates into this desire to make everything last as long as possible. I greatly ration my food and restrict myself out of the fear of running out and having nothing to eat. I live for leftovers and I make sure I eat just enough at restaurants or during homecooked meals for there to be something to put in the fridge at the end of the night. This doesn't always mean I eat until I'm full, though. Most often times, I'm not that full. Not that I could eat any more even if I wanted to (see a few paragraphs above). This would work great if not for the fact that I'm also obsessed with expiration dates. If something has passed it's expiration date or we have leftovers that have been in the fridge for a while, even if they are actually still good and safe to eat, I will not eat them. I threw out an entire pack of baby carrots the other day because they were one day past the expiration date and they looked dried out and therefore I considered them unsafe to eat. I have never had full-on food poisoning in my life before and I don't ever plan to because it seems my goal in life is to be as delicate and restrictive as possible so as to prevent myself from ever throwing up. If I do, I have failed and will overthink it for the next couple weeks. I get so paranoid every time I get sick that it's going to happen again that I just starve myself because I assume you can't throw up if there's nothing in your stomach (newsflash: you can and I learned that the hard way-- I went almost twenty four hours with barely eating something once and I ended up violently vomiting right before I had plans to go out with my best friend and ever since, I have also been terrified of not eating enough and doing the same exact thing to myself again. So basically, if I eat too much, I'm scared I'll throw up. If I don't eat enough, I'm scared I'll throw up. If I eat anything at all, I'm scared I'm going to throw up. It's real fun). The worst experience of this starvation-after-vomiting thing was in sixth grade. It was the day of a huge standardized test and I was not feeling good at all but I knew I couldn't afford to miss this and my mom refused to let me stay home so I sucked it up, did my best, and went to school. The doors hadn't even opened yet and I was already losing it. Literally a full minute before the teachers opened their doors, I started puking down the entire sixth grade hallway in front of EVERYONE. My friend immediately jumped into action and dragged me to the nurses office as I left a trail of vomit behind me. It was the most traumatizing experience of my life and I will never forget it. After this, I refused to eat for days. I went home, my mom gave me a bath, and I slept on the couch for hours until lunchtime when my mom brought me home a Subway sandwich that I could barely eat without feeling like I was going to be sick again. The day passed in a haze and the next morning, I guess I was looked upon with varying shades of disgust and humor. In a way, I think I kind of unwillingly became some sort of legend at that school because everyone remembers me as the girl who puked down the hallway. The next day was like the big celebration for finishing all of those rigorous standardized tests and as such, my teacher bought donuts for everyone. I love donuts so the normal part of my brain was rejoicing but the traumatized side was in a fetal position in the corner having a panic attack. I did end up grabbing a donut but whether I ate it or not was another story. Sometimes I wonder if deep down everyone in my class knew I had some sort of eating disorder because eating that donut the day after I got sick was like trying to teach a fish how to fly and everyone knew it. Everyone saw I was struggling, everyone knew I had a problem. I don't remember if this was an everyone thing or not but I do distinctly remember the boy sitting next to me was watching me eat and egging me on like I was running a marathon. It almost felt like I was the age I am now and attending a kegger where some frat guy is shouting "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!" Just like that, it was simultaneously motivating and condescending. I swear, everyone was watching me as I struggled to just eat that goddamn fucking donut. I never did finish it. I think I ate about half before tossing it in the trash and making peace with failure. It all still haunts me to this day, though. Especially because I put myself through the same torture day in and day out with my eating nowadays. I stare at the food on my plate and I can hear the voices in my head screaming at me to down the damn thing, meanwhile inside my digestive tract is a bunch of blaring sirens and flashing lights for absolutely no goddamn reason.

Will any of this ever get better? Who fucking knows. By now, I've come to terms with the fact that this is an endless cycle and that it's something I will have to struggle through and face time and time again for the rest of my life. Do I enjoy that fact? Absolutely fucking not. But is it realistic? Yeah, I think so. I don't know if there's ever such a thing as true eating disorder recovery, or if I'll ever even find out what the fuck kind of disorder this even is. It's hard to try and treat something that's so complex and that also doesn't seem to fit into any of the commonplace categories. Sometimes I wish I had anorexia or bulimia instead solely so I could at least pin a name to this torture. Otherwise, I don't know how to cure what doesn't even have a name. Sometimes I wonder if this even actually is some sort of eating disorder or if it's just the conglomeration of multiple different issues combining into one giant super disorder that's wreaking havoc across my entire wellbeing. I have no goddamn idea but fuck, do I wish I knew. If only I fucking knew.

#this is just a bunch of personal bullshit #it's redundant and stupid but i just needed to get it all out #so you can happily avoid this if you'd like #eating disorders #ramblings

[we-hear-her]

Angela’s Story

**Disclaimer: This post discusses miscarraige in great detail. Those who are sensitive to this subject are advised!

“When bad things happen, it feels a lot like watching a wildfire sweep through a beautiful landscape. At first all I could see was destruction. The life we had worked so hard to build was being demolished before my eyes could process what was happening. How could this happen to me? But then something changed. I started to see the beauty in that wildfire – I started seeing the potential. Fire invigorates and nourishes the land. Likewise, the tragedy of losing a child has proved that I am stronger than I ever imagined. I emerged from the flames with a new perspective on my life.” -Angela

When I first met Angela we were at a climbing gym in Philadelphia. I could tell instantly that she was a good and kind person. At the time Angela was working a 9-5 job and had just started dating her now husband. A couple weeks ago, I noticed Angela had posted a very personal story on her Facebook page and when I saw what she wrote, I knew her story needed to be shared.

Not long after I met them, Angela and her husband eventually got sick of the city life, sitting in traffic and working 60+ hrs a week to make a paycheck. They had a dream about traveling in a van and made that happen. They got married and eventually started thinking about starting a family.

         “When my husband and I found out we were pregnant, we were thrilled, nervous, excited and a little surprised (we only actually “tried” once!).”

       As they live in a van, they thought they would have more time before welcoming a little one into the world, time they would use to find a place to settle down. They realized they were against the clock so they started bee-lining across the states to find a place to call home for their growing family.

      At 8 weeks pregnant, Angela and her husband were in Bend, Oregon. They had hoped to find a home in Bend but to no avail. They decided before they left Bend they would head to the clinic that offered free, first trimester ultrasounds since they did not have health insurance yet. Everyone, including the doctors and staff at the clinic were thrilled for them.

       “We went back for the Ultrasound and got the news: the baby was surely in there, but was only measuring at 6 weeks and 2 days gestational age. At this point I knew something was very wrong. My body runs like clockwork, and I am meticulous about keeping track of my cycle – down to when I ovulate and when we have sex. I knew the baby should be bigger. They told us that the heart rate was very slow at only 69 BPM.”

       The doctors at the clinic urged them to go to urgent care as the mood quickly changed from excitement to dread. Angela’s would not carry to term. At urgent care, the doctors explained that they had the choice to medically terminate or that her body would naturally miscarry. Little did they know what that would really mean emotionally and physically. Since they had no insurance and the procedure was very costly, they chose to let nature take its course and move on.

       They decided to continue on their 13 hour tearful journey to their next destination, Jackson, Wyoming. They spent days grieving, communicating with each other, and doing as much research on the subject as they could. The internet provided little information and as Angela lost the symptoms she felt being pregnant, she thought things were resolving themselves and that it would happen sooner rather than later. But 2 weeks went by, and they questioned whether the doctors read the ultrasound incorrectly.

**Angela describes the symptoms of her miscarriage in great detail at this point. Please move to the end if this is a sensitive topic for you.**

       “Eventually I started cramping and passed some clots (this is where it starts to get really graphic). The cramps came and went with some light spotting. A few days later I started bleeding like a normal period, with accompanying cramps like a normal period. This continued for a full day before it got real. I thought that might be all it was, considering that the baby was only the size of a pea. Maybe it would be like a heavy period.

          We went to bed around midnight after having dinner with some friends. My cramping had gotten a bit worse, but I was prepared for that. I woke up 2 hours later feeling sick to my stomach, shaky and in tremendous pain. Joe got up to take the dogs out, and when he came back in I fainted in the bed. When I came around, I thought I was going to vomit and I was beginning to bleed heavily. We went to the ER, got checked in, and I began vomiting, and passing large blood clots in between contractions. They drew blood, gave me an IV of fluid and gave me some pain meds (which did nothing for the type of pain I was experiencing). I must commend the doctor and nurses who took care of me for being so gentle and compassionate. They shared their own stories of miscarriage and did their best to make me comfortable. I am grateful for the care they provided.

We left the hospital at around 5:30am and checked into a hotel because I was still having contractions that lasted for about 1 minute and were about 3-5 minutes apart. By the time we got inside the hotel room the contractions had gotten much more intense. I needed help getting to and from the bathroom from bed. When I sat on the toilet, it sounded like I was peeing, but I wasn’t. There was blood pouring out of me, followed by a golf ball sized blood clot. This happened for another 8 hours – during which I was also evacuating in every other way. We almost went back to the ER because of the amount of blood I was passing.

I had pretty constant extreme cramping for the following 2 hours before we got a 20 minute break when we could finally fall asleep. I woke up in a pool of blood writhing in pain. I passed more clots, and finally sometime in the afternoon I passed a few more and the cramping finally eased. It came and went for the next few hours until it finally subsided. At some point during this 14 hours of misery, I had to send Joe to the store to get diapers because I just couldn’t sit on the toilet anymore, and a diaper was the only way I would be able to lay down without ruining all of my clothes. Eventually, the bleeding diminished to that of a normal period, and I could eat some Ritz crackers and ice cream.

Why don’t we talk about this, ladies? Personally, I wish I had known what could happen. If it ended up just being like a heavy menstrual cycle I would have considered myself lucky, and still clueless to the pain of other women. The physical experience blindsided me. I felt very alone (despite my extremely supportive husband, who didn’t leave my side). I didn’t feel the sisterhood backing me up. I didn’t know if I could withstand any more. At one point I was begging God to please make it stop (that’s when I got my 20 minute nap)."

There was a point during this ordeal when I wasn’t sure if I was going to ever want to try to get pregnant again. I don’t think all miscarriages are as physically traumatic as mine felt.  Reading about it on the Internet makes it sound like a lot of women basically get a heavy period and move on, go to work the next day like nothing happened. Is there a secret macho ladies club that I don’t know about? Did I get sandbagged? Am I just a huge wimp?”

I definitely don't think you are a wimp! I can't imagine going through what you have described. I think everyone’s body reacts differently. And you're totally right, why aren't we sharing this with each other? Why aren't we creating a circle of openness and understanding?

       In light of everything going on with women’s health and access to safe medical procedures, what are your thoughts having being touched by this experience?

“I believe that all women have a right to reproductive health care - in my case any affordable health care would have been a game changer - I ended up with $5,000 in medical bills from the emergency room visit. Women’s health is so widely debated by politicians these days, who have no right to be part of that conversation, and shouldn’t decide the fate of our bodies.”

“We deserve better.”

        What keeps you moving every day? What coping techniques have you used, if any, to help aid in your recovery mentally, emotionally and physically?

      “My husband has been really great at motivating me to keep going. Also being in the mountains, in a peaceful and beautiful place helps. Patience with myself has been key to physically recovering - not pushing myself too hard, and allowing myself to rest when I need it. Mentally and emotionally I have been trying to let myself feel the emotions and thoughts about my loss, and then let them go or turn it into a positive. I also keep reminding myself that I carry my baby with me in my heart always, and that is comforting.”

       So what now? What are you guys up to?

      "I am actually bar tending at a small steak house in Wyoming. My husband and I are living the simple life, taking things one day at a time, enjoying every moment. We get to wake up every day and climb, hike, bike, fish and play with our pups!"

      Do you guys have some goals for the future? Have you changed your plans after your ordeal?

      "Our goals for the near future include buying a house, having a baby, and settling into small town life with some chickens and goats in the mountains."

     That sounds amazing, so one last thing. Do you have any advice for other mothers who have miscarried and lost their babies?

“Don’t suffer alone. Lean on the people around you. Find gratitude in the things you gain and the things you learn from your loss - there is always something positive that you can hold on to, even in the darkest times. I just hope that maybe reading my story would help another woman prepare herself. I read so many stories during the two weeks that I waited to miscarry. Not one gave me a sense of the physical pain I would endure.”

A HUGE thank you again to Angela for sharing this incredibly personal story with us!

#We Hear Her #Miscarriage #Women's Health #Women's Rights #Empowerment #Inspirational #Inspirational quotes #empowering quotes #feminism #blog #women's blog #girls #women #sisterhood #female #health #strength #climbing #van life

[musingsofazumbamind]

Getting sick

Nothing is more humiliating than a coworker listening to you vomit. Thursday was that sad day, where all of my human nature went by the wayside and the professional wall that stays up to protect me went tumbling down and down the drain. My school nurse heard me get sick and immediately sent me home. Do not pass go, do not collect $200...

By Thursday night, I had gotten sick again and racked up a fever of 100.4, which felt a bit like I both drank too much and was seeing stars and also that some growth lamp was directed at my face to see what would happen. Even with a nap on Thursday afternoon, I slept 12 straight hours that night without wandering into a bathroom, a fete that I my still need to document. (The pains of being a grown up...)

Waking up on Friday, I had no food in me, my body ached, my equilibrium was riding a horse and the only enjoyable food in its tiny dose was a pack of fruit snacks. There was no going to work, no getting really anything done around my house and the continued search for a sub for for my fitness class increased. I missed

-- the day that many families make a point to celebrate their school secretary

--the last day of Lunch Theater, where I don my fancy clothes and emcee

--Sparkle Day, my favorite costume dress up day of the year

--saying “see you soon” over and over again to the nervous little friends who are desperately afraid of leaving school for lengthy periods of time. (This is the one that hurts me deep--saying and trying a better thing than the thing that teachers traditionally say is my mission these days.)

By Friday afternoon, my daughter came off the bus to find a stack of Christmas untouched on the floor, a mom on the couch asleep wearing a stocking cap, and random devices unplugged and dead from being left on many hours in a short period of time. I knew I had to hide the Christmas, I needed to get the stocking cap into the wash, the phone and laptop plugged bag in and a shower on my body. The energy it took to plan that also meant I needed to sit, with water, and let my daughter help me with whatever we had to do next.

Between 4pm and class, I managed to get my clothes together, take a shower, put on makeup that hid the fresh zits and couch wrinkles that adorned by skin, get dressed and call my BFF to beg for Ritz crackers. There were no Zumba subs available, so off I went to experiment with moving a bit, cueing a bit, and letting my class dance for me. I am truly grateful for the following through this feverish, humbling experience:

1. my BFF for her water and crackers and how she ran to get them within minutes of my class; I know even 3 of those Ritz to start me off made the difference from not being able to teach to barely teaching

2. my friends, my parents of my students, my participants who did not question even once when I asked, “I’ve been sick, so I can’t ‘bring it’ like you can, do you think you can ‘bring it’ tonight for me? And holy crow, they really did! Wait until you hear “Hulk” doubly loud because the instructor can’t yell or squeeze her abs!

3. my friends, my parents of my students, my participants who checked on me throughout and after class when they realized I was unsteady on my feet, especially my friends who sat with me at the end of class while I ate more crackers and got my color back

4. all the folks from class and on Facebook who went out of their way to wish me well, especially the parents from school who knew I had missed one of my important days as Miss Amelia, and my fitness friends who sensed I was at half speed and was not myself.

When fitness instructors get sick there is a major sense of loss. (We know we are going to get sick at some point, but bear with me.) The notion that our getting sick makes it so you don’t have the experience you need, especially at this time of year, that leads you all to recharge and stay healthy and hopefully not get sick, is the hurt of the issue. We uniformly feel there is no canceling class! Getting a sub is a great option, and shows class that we have balance and listen to our bodies, but when there are no subs available, we take a shower and get ready and let people help us.

So, thank you all, for letting me lean on you, for watching me carefully as I leaned on that wall, and letting me watch you just dance, and “bring it” like I asked. My people, moments of gratitude like this, and Ritz crackers just may be the best gifts of the year.

#ameliazumba #ameliabedeliafitness #zumba #fitness #zumbachoreo #gettingsick #ritz crackers